Secrets that Died
by Winged Enchantress
Summary: Stories that no one ever got to tell and that no one ever will.   This is how they broke. This is how they died.


Secrets that Died - A Hunger Games Fanfic

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**Annie**

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"_Did you love Annie right away, Finnick?" I asked._

"_No." A long time passes before he adds, "She crept up on me."_

_-Mockingjay, p. 174_

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This first time he met Annie was the day she won the Games. They were guests at her victory feast. Finnick's life had been thoroughly ruined just a few years before and he was trying to cover it as best as he could. He was casually flirting with the party guests when she came up behind him and told him to move. She was very short, only 15, pretty. Finnick moved to the side and Annie slipped by him, took a tall, narrow glass, downed its contents, and proceeded to throw up in the crystal punch bowl.

Finnick's first reaction was to be scared for her. She was going to make someone angry and, when you're a victor, that can be very dangerous. His second was jealousy. He wished he wasn't so fearful for his loved ones' lives to throw a punch back at his jailers, if only just once. His third reaction, after Annie had delicately eaten her fill and thrown up the entire contents of her stomach a second time, this time into the soup citrine, was that it was best to avoid her at all costs, lest he get caught up in her punishment by accident.

She threw up three times that night. She always did like doing things in threes.

Annie was a master at booby-traps. Her elder brother, who had never been in the Hunger Games, but had wanted to be prepared in case he was, had taught her everything she knew. He said it would be best for them, since some are not too hard and this way, they didn't kill anyone. They could leave the Hunger Games with their conscience intact.

At the age of fifteen she was chosen as District 4's female tribute and was cast into an arena that was part woods and part old mining site. The water was red and smelled of iron.

After grabbing wire thrown from the Cornucopia, she bolted into the woods and started making traps. She joined up with the Careers, as she should, and made more traps. She told no one where they were. When a tribute would die, the Careers would rally and search to find the hunter, but Annie could never be sure if it was another tribute or one of her traps.

The games went on like that. The red water flooded out a few tributes, caves collapsed, strange mole muttations chased tributes together. Eventually only a handful of Careers remained and they attacked each other, one by one. There were only four left when Annie's turn came. She gave them the slip and they chased her for half a day until they cornered her at the blasted out mountainside. That's where she set off her last trap and brought the cliff down on them, taking the last three out all at once. And the pretty little girl from District 4 won the Hunger Games.

Annie didn't talk to people much, and when she did it was only to make a snide, under-handed comment. She grew more reckless over time. The last time he saw her before- before she broke, was at a party very similar to the one where he had met her the first time. Her tactics had changed a bit since then. President Snow was holding a winter ball at his mansion that glittered with pomp and pageantry. It was the eve of her 18th birthday. Annie aged gracefully and she used that to her advantage. She was absolutely stunning that night. Everyone noticed, although the victors tried not to pay her any mind. They all felt pity for her, for various reasons, some even felt anger.

She would stand alone, fresh skin exposed all the way up to her hip, hair pulled up off her neck, bare arms, low neckline. Her posture would be straight and perfect, and she would pick at her small plate of food with eyes dulled from boredom. It was a tactic that the ridiculous citizens of the Capitol allowed her to employ time and time again. Some fool, temporarily distracted by her youth and beauty, would approach her and flirt, attempt to make small talk. Her eyes wouldn't even move from their spot on the opposite wall as she'd tilt her head and spit in their food. If they acted indignant, she acted like she didn't even notice and would continue to be bored watching the peacocks flutter around her.

A few tributes tried to talk to her. They knew how old she'd be turning, how quickly she'd lose the last defense of a pretty victor, but she didn't hear them. She wasn't going to play nice. Not with the Capitol. Not ever.

Snow had been watching her, of course. Taking tabs of her discretions. Finnick saw that. He watched his eyes follow her. Finnick watched as President Snow gave Annie one last try. The pale man's swollen lips dripped coy, lyrical words into the ears of two of the most richly and bizarrely dressed men on the floor. Their faces held devious intentions. Annie was by the tall, narrow glasses again, that she favored so much. The men approached her, moved with secret promises. Annie watched them, her eyes sliding from one man to the other, drinking in every detail. Their mouths twitched as they whispered to her, eyes flickering in anticipation. Annie said nothing and let them talk, let them delude themselves into a flickering passion and, when they were finished with their proposal, there was a pause. An unblinking pause. Then, with barely a flick of her wrist, the contents of a tall, narrow wine glass were all over the first man's face, then the second's. Then, before turning away, she took a third glass and dumped it on a woman standing at the table on the other side of her. She took a forth glass for herself. "I always did like doing things in threes."

The last time Finnick saw her, she was sitting on the fountain, her hand holding her head up, her hair taken down and tousled around her head and shoulders. One leg was up, her dress falling away. Her other hand still limply held the narrow wine glass, but its contents had long since fallen away into the garishly lit fountain. The yellow lighting washed out all her color and threw her face into shadow.

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There was snow on the ground when they returned District 4. It was a very light dusting and it swirled around in playful spirals across the frozen ground. A fog came in that night, and it hid the car that pulled up in Victor's Village very early that morning. The sun wouldn't be up for another few hours. They were all still in their beds.

Annie awoke to her mother screaming. She looked up from her pillow. Her door was still closed. No one had disturbed her room.

Then her father shouted. They muffled him.

Annie got up slowly at first, her nightgown barely falling to her knees. She crossed to the door a bit faster. The house was untouched. She walked to her parents' room. The door was barely ajar. Their blankets were on the floor. She heard her mother again and walked to the window. The fog was thick, but she could see them in front of the house with their captors.

And President Snow. He waved to her in the window.

Annie burst out of her parents' room and threw herself down the stairs. Her brother was inside the door and reached out a hand to keep her from running outside. She broke from him, but only made it to the front step before she couldn't go any further.

People in white were holding her parents' arms behind their backs. Her mother was weak-kneed and the beginnings of a rather large welt was already forming above her father's right eye. Her brother was still inside, trying to get Annie to get back in the house, but she didn't hear him. She was listening to President Snow.

"I warned you," the pale man said, circling her parents slowly, snow dancing around his feet as he moved. "Didn't I warn you?" His red lips were almost fluorescent in the cold and the white and the fog. "Not to cause trouble, and look at what you go and do." Her mother winced as her white guard pulled her up onto legs that had no strength left.

"So now, Annie. Silly little Annie," Snow was smiling. "You're going to be punished."

Annie's lungs couldn't extract the oxygen from the freezing air. Her breath was short and shallow and a second set of guards stepped forward from the fog. They pulled out knives. Snow held up a hand to make them pause.

"You know," he started, sounding like he just had a wonderful idea. "I was just going to give your punishment to your parents for not raising you to behave, but you know-" He was almost laughing. "I like doing things in threes."

Annie wasn't conscious of what was happening until guards in white were pulling her brother out from behind the doorframe. She stumbled to grab him, but she suddenly pulled back on the last step.

There was snow on the ground. It was everywhere.

Her brother was pulled up next to her parents and President Snow continued talking as they pulled out a third knife for him. "This is all your fault, you know," he said as their throats were slit. "You thought you could do whatever you pleased." They were making noises. Their blood was too bright. There was too much of it. President Snow stepped around it. "And look what happened. Look what you did."

Her family's bodies were limp and red. They fell to the hard ground one by one and Annie forgot how to breathe.

"You did this," Snow said, taking a bloodied knife from one of the white guards. He traced a hand across the whole in her brother's neck. "You thought you were innocent." Snow stood and approached her with slow, contemplative footsteps and wiped himself clean on her. "But, Annie," said his swollen lips, holding the knife in front of her eyes and bringing one of her hands up to hold it there. They were too red. "There's blood on your hands."

He left without another word with his guards and the dancing snow hid all trace of them. It swirled around her parents and her brother, even though they weren't moving.

Her hands looked like they were bleeding. The knife, too. It was dripping. Her family was in a pile on the ground and there was blood. There was too much blood.

Annie started screaming. The knife was stuck to her hand. The blood was staining her skin and she was screaming. She had no breath to scream and she screamed anyway. She screamed louder. The fog tried to muffle her, but she tore through it. Lights went on all across Victor's Village and in the town. All across the District people woke to screaming. And it didn't stop.

Victors and their families found her on her front step with a knife in her hand and her family dead on the ground. Maybe some of them thought she killed them, but most of them knew what had happened. There was some pity there.

They wrapped up her family and cleaned up the street. They wrestled the knife from her hand and cleaned her up. When the blood was gone, her screams turned into strangled yammering and tears. Choked off screams. Last words. Pleas for help. Mercy. They never knew what she said.

Finnick kept watch when they finally got her to bed. It worked for an hour, but then she started screaming and she woke up, abruptly, thinking it was her mother screaming, the tributes screaming; trapped. They were trapped. Her trap. Her trap; She killed them. But she saw only Finnick in the doorway; no brother, no father, no mother and she all her tears came back. She could hear them. They were making noises she couldn't understand. Finnick turned to get help, but Annie reached out for him. "No! Don't go out there!"

Finnick stopped and, after a moment's hesitation, sat next to her on the bed. She laced her arms around him and clung on for dear life. "Don't go out there. Don't leave. You'll die."

"I won't leave," Finnick replied, placing a gentle hand in her tousled hair.

"Don't leave," she repeated, pressing herself into him, muffling her own tears.

"I won't," Finnick repeated, getting comfortable, supporting her head.

"Don't get caught," she warned, her voice sinking lower as she hid herself in his chest.

"I won't," he repeated again, holding her tightly.

"Don't die." She whimpered, clinging to his warmth as she drifted to sleep.

A long time passed before he answered. "I won't."


End file.
